A co-author of a disputed Heritage Foundation report on a new immigration bill has resigned amid controversy over claims he made about immigrants having low IQs. A spokesman for the conservative think tank confirmed Jason Richwine's resignation Friday without offering details.

Richwine was one of two authors of a report released Monday that said immigration legislation pending in the Senate would cost $6.3 trillion over 50 years as immigrants consumed federal benefits without making up for it in taxes. The report quickly came under attack as critics from the left and right said it didn't account for economic benefits from immigration.

Attention turned to Richwine when his 2009 Ph.D. dissertation from Harvard University came to light in which he asserted that: "The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations." He argued that the result is low socioeconomic assimilation and other problems and argued that allowing in immigrants with high IQs would help solve the problems.

Richwine's comments got attention from immigrant activist groups, on left-leaning blogs and elsewhere, and helped muddy Heritage's attempt to refocus the immigration debate on what it says are unsustainable costs from the new legislation.

I have a mother in law from Mexico who is a resident and still doesn’t speak English after 32 years.

My wife is the ONLY one in her family making it and the best thing that happened to her was getting kicked out of her mom’s house when she was 17.

Currently a 14 year old little sister in law was accepted into a Los Angeles High School and she can’t tell you what 13-4 is. Low IQ? Comes from a lower class section of a country where the mom had only a second grade education and passed it on?

My wife is the exception. Her memory is a vault (especially if I do something wrong she wants to remember), but what we have coming in should be forced to make it or leave. NO SOCIAL PROGRAM ASSISTANCE.

It sounds to me like this guy is assuming that all recent immigrants are dirt-poor Mexican peasants crawling into the USA to take advantage of government handouts. But if the new amnesty bill passes, they’ll be flooding in from all over the world (including China). A blanket statement like his is just stupid. IQ varies from individual to individual, not from culture to culture. Generations ago they said the same thing about Irish immigrants, and Italian immigrants, and East European Jewish immigrants, etc.

31
posted on 05/10/2013 2:43:30 PM PDT
by jespasinthru
(Proud member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.)

I hope that Richwine lands on his feet. We need intellectual honesty about important issues.

Me too.

Mexico is sending us it's most undesirable citizens, criminal insurgents etc to invade the USA to colonize it. No wonder they are the lower IQ types, the others are either "connected" or waiting for the grunts to finish the hard work of La Raza'ing our country and doing all they can to bring down the economy, then the "elites" will be set up to use the ones already here to support them as the conquerors.

How low will supporters of the Gang of Eight immigration bill go to get their way? This low: They've shamelessly branded an accomplished Ivy League-trained quantitative analyst a "racist" and will stop at nothing to destroy his career as they pave their legislative path to another massive illegal alien benefits bonanza. Jason Richwine works for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He's a Harvard University Ph.D. who co-authored a study that pegs the cost of the Ted Kennedy Memorial Open Borders Act 2.0 legislation at $6.3 trillion. Lead author Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at Heritage, a former United States...

The Richwine thesis has not been disproved and has many elements of reality about it.

I'm not addressing whether it's factually correct or not. But Heritage writings are supposed to be helping the conservative cause.

Thereofore, if I was writing for Heritage and had a view that might be able to be interpreted by the mainstream press as being politically incorrect and then pushed like crazy in the propaganda machine, I'd be sure to word by writing to have to move in the direction I wanted the public to move intellectually, but at the same time not offer red meat the to the left.

A loosely analagous hypothetical... perhaps a squad of soldiers would want everyone to shoot at the enemy in general, but if the squad us in a situation where they're trying to remain concealed and are holding their fire, if a squad member shoots at an enemy at that point and it gives the squad's position away to the enemy, then that shot didn't "help".

To me, the Heritage Foundation just moved to the Dark Side. So many in Washington show no backbone or principle. How quickly this organization distanced itself. De Mint not looking like a strong leader of integrity. How many more will leave when they see how their boss throws his employees under the bus.

I agree completely. Its the number two thing that bothers me the most about our side. We don’t defend our own when under attack. Why should we expect anyone to stand on priciple, when fellow soliders run for the tall grass after the first shots are fired.

Oh, the number one thing? When conservatives refer to any media they disagree with as “mainstream media”

So what? As much noise is this is making, it wouldn't have mattered if they had fired him. Everyone knows he was shown the door.

I was given that choice, and I took Door Number 2. I was hurt and humiliated for number of years, but, the way the organization has devolved, I now consider it a badge of honor. Sad to see The Heritage Foundation going in the same direction.

All immigrants? I work at a nursing home and today the administrator had several doctors in for lunch. Two appeared to be Indian and one maybe Chinese, and one I’m not sure, but none were “American”. The future of medicine in America. I doubt they have low IQs.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he did choose to leave on his own. If he is principled and believes what he’s written (which I’m sure he does) he also realizes that the controversy is nothing but a distraction to benefit the left and he wouldn’t want to be part of that distraction any more than he already is.

“’The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, ... .’ He argued that ... allowing in immigrants with high IQs would help solve the problems.”

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